EMERGENCY! report from TWITTER - Nuclear power plant - attempts to save plant STOPPED

I belive the workers s at the plant bought as much time for the world as they could. Those last workers where not savely in control rooms. they where making last ditch repairs, fighting fires...
They accumulated all the radioactivity they could, and they will have to pay the price.
Now it is up to TEPCO and international help to figure out a way to get a grip on the problems. They have until the weekend when the wind will turn inland again.

The hard part, that since last Friday obviously nothing could be done to help them.

Now things go to worse. I thought they could be able to avoid what is coming now.

If they don't get a handle until Friday, when wind turns it might get worse for the direct neighbourhood than Czernobyl

Update: workers are back in the nuclear power plant.

news.yahoo.com...

good so, lets hope they get help enough to make a dent, into realy improving things.

Hi, guys, new here. Cool site!

All I can think of is, the government of japan ordered everybody to stay inside their homes. They didn't evacuate, most likely because they couldn't handle the refugee movement. Now, they are going to abbandon the reactor (if it is true) let it burn, possibly explode, definatly radiate, and now it is too late. Man, bad decisions. Poor people. I also hope this can't be true.

I ask myself in what country is this catastrophy happening?
I mean they need a pump for reaktor 5 so they take a unused one from reactor 6...
A country like Japan should be able to get one there within hours.
Either there are people still sleeping and not realizing, this is a national yes even international emergency. This means go and help first, think about reimbursement later.
There are two things neccesary:

1. For the workers on site, they must voice their needs, and the difficulties they face.

2. The rest of the world should see to it, to meet their needs ASAP. The workers risk their lives lets not prolong their need to do so.

The Japanese are very proud people especially when it comes to business , these poor workers may well feel a personally responsibility to try rectify this and may well end up going down with the ship whilst trying to salvage the plant. The entire world is watching and they are just referred to as 'workers' , I hope beyond hope that this calms down and each of them has their chance to accept the acclaim....not the governments.

If this is rectified each and everyone of those workers/workers families should be given a vast amount of money and basically given the key to the country to do as they see fit.

At times like this the real heroes make themselves known, however, as always the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.......would it be truly outrageous to send in 100/200/300+ people knowing they would not live beyond 2 weeks in order to save tens or maybe hundreds of thousands?? Its been done before Ive no doubt it will happen again.
Many times in history those on the front line march into battle knowing they will not return.

A full blown meltdown would mean:

The fuel rods become exposed and they are unable to cool them, causing them to boil the remaining water creating hydrogen and releasing radioactive steam. Once this occurs the rods physically melt. As we learned with Chernobyl, this creates essentially radioactive lava (can't think of the exact name) that then burrows down into the ground moving towards the center of the earth.

While this is happening, the rods are emitting radioactive particles.

This is a horrible situation if you are near to the reactor, but won't cause too much harm outside of 100km depending on wind patterns.

The REAL danger lies in the possibility of a fire or explosions, while the rods are exposed and melting (apparently the rods can actually ignite the air in some cases) which would be a worst case scenario, an explosion could damage the bottom containment and get into the ground, then there's no stopping it. But it could also blast bits of the rods, and other contaminated material, all over the place, spreading the direct contact radiation far and wide, while blasting tiny dust particulate, full of radiation, into the air. This is the fallout you'd be worried about, and this would be the stuff that might make it over the pacific.

The steam releases are of no concern unless you are in Japan, and explosion or raging fires whilst in meltdown, would be potentially devastating.

ABC News reports physicist Michio Kaku warning that situation grows ever nearer the worst case scenario which is that all efforts to control the reactors must stop due to deadly radiation levels, in which case the Japanese military would take over and begin covering the entire nuke plant with sand, boron and concrete in an attempt to completely bury the plant. Kaku: "We're very close to the point of no return."

link abcnews.go.com...

I don't understand. Someone please enlighten me... I cannot believe that the geniuses who contrived nuclear-powered reactors never thought about earthquakes. Is it so damn difficult to pass a law that says "No nuclear reactors shall be constructed within 300 miles of a known fault line"?